FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Seanna Hore, Ginsberg/Libby
seanna.hore@ginsberglibby.com

Gladys Santos, Ginsberg/Libby
gladys.santos@ginsberglibby.com
 

LOS ANGELES (November 14, 2024) – Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization celebrating 40 years of the Spirit Awards, announced today that 37 filmmakers and 15 projects were selected for the 22nd Fast Track Film Finance Market taking place in-person November 12–14, 2024. The program is an intensive, four-day film financing market in which participants are connected with established financiers, production companies, agents, managers and other film industry professionals who can move their current projects forward.

“This year’s Fast Track lineup features a dynamic mix of fiction and nonfiction projects that push creative boundaries and highlight the diverse voices shaping today’s film landscape,” said Dea Vazquez, Associate Director of Fiction Programs. “We’re thrilled to connect these visionary filmmakers with key industry players at the finance market, helping them find the resources to bring their unique stories to life,” added Daniel Cardone, Manager of Nonfiction Programs.

The Sloan Fast Track Grant, a $20,000 grant to support the production of a project that explores science and technology themes or characters in engaging and innovative ways, will be awarded to director Gillies MacKinnon, and producers Suri Ellerton and Sarit Ben Yair for their project May Savidge Moves Her House.

Previous Fast Track projects include Minding the Gap by Bing Liu and Diane Quon, nominated for an Academy Award in 2019; Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, produced by Maria Altamirano, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for three Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2024; Law Chen and Jonathan Hsu’s 2023 Slamdance Audience and Jury Award winner Starring Jerry as Himself; Saim Sadiq’s Cannes Un Certain Regard and 2023 Spirit Award Winner Joyland, produced by Apoorva Charan; Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown’s 2018 Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award-winning documentary United Skates; and Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection, produced by Chester Algernal Gordon, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for three Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2023. Other notable filmmakers who have participated in the program include Ana Lily Amirpour, Sean Baker, Maryam Keshavarz, James Ponsoldt, Tina Mabry and Lana Wilson.

Industry participants include: 3Pas Studios, APA / Independent Artist Group, Bankside Films, Bleecker Street, Bright West, CAA, Chrystie Street Casting, Cinetic Media, Dead Duck Films, First Gen, Giant Leap Media, Giant Pictures, Heidi Levitt Casting, IDA, Impact Partners, Kas Kas Productions, Kindred Spirit, Ley Line Entertainment, Linden Entertainment, Los Angeles Media Fund, Mandalay Pictures, Media Res, Motto Pictures, National Geographic, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Park Pictures, PASTEL, Perspective Fund, Pinky Promise, Plan B, Redefine Entertainment, Rhino Films, Rideback Rise, River Road Entertainment, Roadside Attractions, SFFILM, Searchlight Pictures, ShivHans Pictures, Sons of Rigor, Sony Pictures Classics, Sundance Institute, T-Street, Topic Studios, Tribeca Studios, Unapologetic Projects, Universal Pictures Content Group, Unnecessary Pictures, Untitled Entertainment, UTA, Visit Films, Wavelength, Winter Coat Films, Working Films and XYZ Films.

Film Independent Artist Development programs promote unique independent voices by helping filmmakers create and advance new work through Project Involve; Filmmaker Labs (Directing, Documentary, Episodic, Producing and Screenwriting); Fast Track Film Finance Market, Episodic Directing Intensive, Fiscal Sponsorship, Amplifier Fellowship, Imaginar Producers Residency and the Imaginar TV Incubator for Fearless Latinx Creators, as well as through grants and awards that provide over one million dollars annually to visual storytellers.

For more information on any of the Labs, or the projects that have been developed in them, please contact artistdevelopment@filmindependent.org. Additional information can be found at filmindependent.org.

The 2024 Fast Track Film Finance Market is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The following filmmakers and their projects were selected to participate in Film Independent’s 2024 Fast Track program:
 

FICTION TRACK

 
Black Snake
Writer/Director: Naishe Nyamubaya
Producer: Sue-Ellen Chitunya
Logline: In a rural village, a family eager to start a new life is forced to face their cultural identity, when the appearance of a mysterious tree coincides with their arrival in the village.

Burning Well
Writer/Director: MG Evangelista
Producers: Simone Ling, Lucas Ford
Logline: In a re-imagining of the Prodigal Son story, on receiving news of his mother’s illness, a young trans man returns home to mend complicated relationships and rediscover what love and family really mean.

Chalino
Writer/Director: Jesus Celaya
Producers: Diego Nájera, Harris Kauffman
Logline: The story of Chalino Sanchez, who immigrated from Sinaloa to Los Angeles in the late 1980s and triggered a musical revolution by immortalizing the lives of Mexican outlaws through song.

Cottagecore
Writer/Director: Sonja O’Hara
Producer: Peter Phok
Logline: A group of queer, polyamorous friends at an idyllic intimacy retreat face a sudden disappearance, plunging the weekend into a seductive and violent battle for survival.

Marcy Learns Something New
Writer/Director: Julia Kennelly
Producer: Devon Young
Logline: A widow is drawn to dominatrix classes after discovering her late husband’s infidelity.

May Savidge Moves Her House
Writer/Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Producers: Suri Ellerton, Sarit Ben Yair
Logline: England, 1969. When 60-year-old May Savidge’s medieval house is threatened with demolition by the council, she goes to extreme lengths to save it – deconstructing it and rebuilding it, all by herself.

Rubber Hut
Writer/Director: Hanna Gray Organschi
Producers: Tara Sheffer, Elizabeth Woodward
Logline: Rhode Island, 1992. An entrepreneurial ex-Pan Am stewardess opens a drive-thru condom kiosk in her Italian-Catholic town and overnight becomes the local lightning rod.

Tell Me a Seceret
Writer/Director: Montana Mann
Producer: Steven Snyder
Logline: Thirty-three-year-old Iranian-American, Azi Rahimi, is forced to confront a secret from her adolescence when she receives an update in a long-closed missing persons case.

The Ballad of Tita and the Machines
Writer/Director: Miguel Angel Caballero
Writer/Producer: Luis Antonio Aldana
Producer: Helena Sardinha
Logline: In the near future, Tita, an aging strawberry picker and recent widow, wages a quiet rebellion against the new AI humanoids at work that threaten her livelihood.

Work
Writer/Director: April Maxey
Producers: Skylar Andrews, Alexander Stegmaier
Logline: A struggling photographer seeking independence is drawn back to sex work, igniting an intoxicating affair that could unravel her life.
 

DOCUMENTARY TRACK

 
(Untitled) Kramer Brothers Documentary
Director: Brandon Kramer
Producer: Lance Kramer
Logline: An intimately observed story about the complex experience of a family in the aftermath of October 7th.

My NDA
Directors: Juliane Dressner, Miriam Shor
Producers: Juliane Dressner, Miriam Shor, Elizabeth Woodward, Hanna Gray Organschi
Logline: My NDA follows several people as they decide to break their NDAs and, at extreme personal risk, go public with their stories. Through them, we see how a simple intellectual property contract has become a weapon used by those in power to silence, manipulate and control.

Nine
Directors: Jeremy Levine, Rachael DeCruz
Producers: Rajal Pitroda, Rachael DeCruz
Logline: After being sent to prison for life at 18, Gerald – also known as “Nine” – met Henry, who raised him into the man he is today. Using the lessons Henry taught him, Gerald organized his way out of prison. Now, Gerald is on a mission to bring his 83-year-old “Pops” home while there’s still time.

Strip, Strike, Unite!
Director/Producers: Kristina Goolsby, Sarah Skibitzke
Logline: Can a small group of North Hollywood strippers protesting dangerous conditions achieve the unthinkable and transform their workplace into the only unionized strip club in America?

Stallions
Director/Producer: Rita Baghdadi
Producer: Sahar Yousefi
Logline: A crew of stallion riders make dreams come true on the coast of Morocco.
 

ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York-based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.

Sloan’s Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with a dozen leading film schools and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, Film Independent, The Black List, the Athena Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. The Sloan Film Program has supported over 850 film projects and has helped develop over 30 feature films, including Mabel, Tesla, Radium Girls, Adventures of a Mathematician, One Man Dies a Million Times, The Sound of Silence, To Dust, Operator, The Imitation Game and The Man Who Knew Infinity. The Foundation has supported feature documentaries such as The White House Effect, Join or Die, Werner Herzog’s Theater of Thought, David France’s How to Survive a Pandemic, Picture a Scientist, Coded Bias, In Silico, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, The Bit Player, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans. It has also given early award recognition to standout films such as Oppenheimer, Love Me, BlackBerry, Don’t Look Up, Linoleum, Ammonite, The Aeronauts, The Martian, First Man and Hidden Figures.

The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the best-selling book that became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017, and Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus, adapted for the screen in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer.

For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org or follow the Foundation at @SloanPublic on X, Instagram and Facebook.
 

ABOUT FILM INDEPENDENT

For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling in all its forms, and to foster a culture of inclusion. We support a global community of artists and audiences who embody diversity, innovation, curiosity and uniqueness of vision.

In addition to producing the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the organization supports creative professionals with Artist Development programs, grants and labs. Signature mentorship program Project Involve fosters the careers of talented filmmakers from underrepresented communities. Education events and workshops equip filmmakers of all ages and experience levels with tools and resources. Global Media Makers, a cultural exchange program produced in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, provides career-building opportunities for international film professionals. And year-round screening series Film Independent Presents offers a robust program of unique cinematic experiences, including screenings, conversations, Live Reads and Bring the Noise musical events.

For more information or to become a Member, visit filmindependent.org.